Last night on television: Out of the Blue (BBC1) - Real Crime: Murder in Harvey Nicks (ITV1)

By James Walton

12:01AM BST 29 Apr 2008

By James Walton

In advance, Out of the Blue (BBC1) has been hailed – or maybe marketed – as the new Neighbours. If it’s going to run as long, then yesterday’s first episode does need to be followed by least 5,399 more. Still, at this admittedly early stage, the programme is looking quite promising.

Although a BBC commission, plenty of the classic Aussie-soap trademarks are certainly in place – including a shamelessly gorgeous cast. But there are other elements too. The BBC has acknowledged the show has “a Friends quality” (as well it might, given that one of the characters is a kooky blonde who writes rubbish songs). A more unexpected influence, though, seems to be all those recent American shows which spin out their thriller storylines for as long as humanly possible – and sometimes longer.

Before the opening credits, Gabby (Sophie Katinis) explained in voice-over how she’d organised the reunion of a bunch of people who’d been best friends until her 21st birthday – when, in some undisclosed way, “everything went wrong”. Nine years on, sadly, the chances of a cheerful resolution didn’t sound great either. “In less than 48 hours,” Gabby continued, “one of us would be dead – and someone close to us, maybe even one of us, would be the killer.”

And with that, it was Aussie-soap business as usual for a while. The reunited mates had barbecues in the Sydney sunshine, set up love triangles and walked around in their swimwear. They also received welcomes of varying warmth from their families – with the frostiest going to Philby (Dylan Landre), who’d returned from London with a pregnant girlfriend. (“Take that cow you knocked up and get out of here,” suggested his brother.) Yet, because we knew there’d soon – or eventually – be a murder, all of these things were cunningly able to appear much more significant and intriguing than they’d have done otherwise.

Presumably, it won’t take 5,000 episodes to find out who was killed and who did it. (Even the makers of Lost couldn’t pull that off.) Nonetheless, as a gimmick to lure us in to a new soap, this one seems pretty neat to me.

Real Crime: Murder in Harvey Nicks (ITV1) told the harrowing story of 22-year-old Clare Bernal, who in 2005 was shot dead in the store where she worked by Michal Pech. After she’d ended their three-week relationship, Pech stalked Clare for over a month, once threatening to kill her if she reported him. Even so, Clare did – but, while on bail, Pech returned to his native Slovakia, bought the gun he’d shoot her with, and brought it back on the ferry.

The programme added a few unwelcome TV touches to the stalking part – hiring an actor to look as mad as Pech, and endlessly repeating the death-threat scene. Oddly, it was less excitable about any mistakes the authorities might have made. “No-one could have predicted Pech was planning murder,” it informed us firmly – even though, armed with hindsight, a couple of psychologists last night claimed that all the danger signs were there. (Unarmed with hindsight, a psychologist at the time had examined Pech, decided he had no mental problems and diagnosed a bad case of love.)

In the end, the documentary was saved by Clare’s mother Tricia, whose grief didn’t stop her from being impressively clear-eyed about where blame was and wasn’t due. With two other bereaved mothers, she’s also set up a centre in Croydon that works with stalking victims and tries to bring together the kind of evidence that, in Clare’s case, emerged only after she was dead. If Real Crime helps to fulfil Tricia’s hope for similar centres elsewhere, then it’ll have been a lot more worthwhile than seemed likely for much of the time last night.